Sign o' The Times

Of course you can. It’s not an unreasonable question, there’s a long answer and a short answer. You see I’ve got form on this score.

It all began as these things often do with Steve O’Brien and I giggling like school boys. One of the many things we derive childish fun from is comparing the worlds of Doctor Who and Hip Hop.  The various unlikely permutations has given us literally minutes of hilarity. We were probably at a convention when the idea that really kicked this all off gained traction. You see I’m an absolute twat for getting stuff signed, usually Doctor Who tat, I dunno why, but back when Steve was still drinking one of us came up with the idea of getting an inappropriate Rap album signed at a convention. The idea would come up every couple of years and would make us giggle. I’d had a dry run a year before when I got the book I was reading at the time ‘Raging Bulls, Easy Riders’ -  about American 70s cinema -  signed by various Doctor Who B-listers at the Regenerations convention in Swansea.

The following year I found myself in a record shop in Bristol going through their Rap section. My original choice had been a  Bootylicous ‘Naughty By Nature album’, (the thought of Colin Baker signing it still makes me laugh) but instead I landed on ‘N.W.A’s Greatest Hits’ with each of the Crompton crew’s photos on the front. It made me laugh, it made Steve laugh and it made our friends laugh. The weekend of convention I was surprisingly nervous about putting my lark into action. Fraizer Hines was reluctant to sign it, but eventually did. Sylvester McCoy looked daggers at me as he signed under Doctor Dre. Peter Purvis didn’t bat an eyelid as he signed under Easy-Ez’s photo and we talked about him going to see The Clash back in the day after he’d recorded Blue Peter (Purvis not Easy). Michael Jayston was a bit incredulous but we had a pleasant chat and when he found out that I was an artist he told me how Francis Bacon had propositioned him and Tom Baker in exchange for one of his paintings, but they’d turned him down! The fools!

The people who got it laughed very hard, the people who didn’t well, didn’t. They just gave me a hard stare. For such a completely wonderful but daft series Doctor Who fandom can be incredibly po-faced. There was an unexpected bonus to this.  I submit (unsuccessfully) to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition every year, and friends suggested that instead of submitting my usual figurative abstract nonsense that I’d submit the ‘N.W.A’ album as a conceptual piece. There was just one element missing…

The triumph of the N.W.A album got Steve and I thinking. Public Enemy were doing a series of UK gigs that year, ending at Brixton Academy, and I had an ‘in’. So thinking that at the very least I’d just get the album returned, I sent off the ‘Doctor Who Sound Effects’ album to get signed. Six weeks later I’d given up hope when it was returned to me! Not only was it signed by Public Enemy but with a handwritten letter from Chuck D saying ‘I bet you weren’t expecting that!’. Brilliant! I got both album covers scanned. When my wife picked the covers from the print shop the bloke who handed them back said “We’ve been talking about these all week! Do you realise how rare that signed N.W.A album is?”
“You have no idea.” replied my wife. I had one print made of the two covers, framed them and submitted it to the R.A under the title ‘Oh, the humanity!’. It’s the only time I’ve ever heard back from the R.A, they asked ‘What is this?’, I mumbled something about Duchamp, then they asked if I had the copyright, I said no, and they replied that if it was accepted that they could sort it. It was rejected.

Steve and I found this to be a wonderful wheeze! We thought long and hard about a follow up. Well we didn’t, we just occasionally laughed about some inappropriate options, and out of that the idea of getting ‘American Psycho’ signed by Bonnie Langford was born. We knew she was attending a convention in Oxford that we were door stepping. We had a fine old weekend with our mates including Miles ‘MilesBot’ Hamer and Paul ‘Captain’ Kirkley. Hungover but happy on the Sunday I queued up waiting for Bonzo to turn up, but I had a train to catch and she was a no show. It was with some disappointment we went to catch a taxi to the train station, but just as we were waiting she turned up, so I ran up and asked her to sign it as she stepped out of her taxi. She was very obliging if – rightly – a little confused.

“Am I in this?” she asked. It made us all giggle and we went our way. I had an idea for what was next for the book then promptly lost it, well I say lost it. I put in on a shelf and as is often the way I found it again when I was looking for something else. So I listed it on eBay with the description ‘A genuine one of a kind.’, I originally listed it at £199 but then thought ‘Shit, some lunatic might actually buy it for that.’ So upped it to £299. It was listed for about a day when Captain Kirkley tweeted it, and for a brief shining moment it went viral.

Someone ‘close to Bonnie’ got in touch and said she had no memory of signing it, and that it was a fake. I did wonder why anyone would want to fake Bonnie Langford’s autograph, but then reasoned why would anyone want to get ‘America Psycho’ signed by her for a start, which is a good point. I’m not on Twitter so I watched with an amused detachment. Some of my friends defended me and confirmed that it was genuine. Captain K posted a picture of her actually signing it. Then someone bid the £299 for it.

This was a bit of a thing for a week or so, with some back and forth but then a few hours before the end the highest bidder withdrew his bid. It would have been the cherry on the cake had it gone for £299 but to be honest I didn’t want to sell it.

So that’s the long answer, but back to the question, ‘Why did I do it?’ for the same reason I do most things in life. To make me and Steve O’Brien laugh.